How often should observations take place?

[ChocOrange1]

My daughter attends a setting for 12 hours a week, she is 4 years old.
The setting use tapestry and usually update about once a month with an observation tracking against the EYFS. This didn't seen very frequent to me for observations, but as she is older I was OK with it.
However, we have not had any individual observations on Tapestry since December. The managers says this is because they're short staffed due to covid, but surely doing observations to track progress is a really important part of childcare? How frequently do other children have observations and has this been affected by the pandemic?
She also changed days at the beginning of January (at their request) and I haven't been informed of who her key person is. It feels like she has been forgotten about.

Sorry, that should have been @17

But I also think some settings spend far to much time in observations and should spend more time reading children stories, etc. It's a fine art getting the balance, and can be done by experienced practitioners, but a really big ask if someone newly qualified or not used to teaching EYFS.

@SandysMam

I judged our nursery on how happy our kids were there and their bond with the staff. Anything else was a bonus! Early years should be about play and building social relationships in my opinion and if a nursery is obsessed with paperwork and targets, they may not be fulfilling those things. I took my DD out of a nursery where on the surface things looked very up to scratch, but in reality staff spent tons of time doing paperwork and were too busy and stressed to engage with the children. Just my experience though.

Absolutely I want her to be happy and she really enjoys going there. I wouldn't expect staff to spend all day doing paperwork, but one observation per month was what they were doing and I was happy with that. Its now been 3 months.

6 observations a day!! I work in a nursery and have done for 16 years and thats a sign of a not very in depth observations and a case of just logging anything you see just to " tick a box "

We do 2 a month and an artwork observation and that is more than enough

Yeah 6 a day.... child in question was building and trying to count, enjoying the small world and making animal noises, copying me writing paperwork by mark making, figuring out how to use pvc pipes to move cars and balls, making different sounds using loose parts, playing outside (included lots of physical/communication). We have plenty of time to play and communicate with our children - it's the best part of the job 😁

ChocolateFace, I'm not sure you understood my point.
Writing observations is not the best way of developing children. Many settings and Ofsted are moving away from them.
If the nursery is using this new approach then there will not be many observations, possibly just a half termly assessment.
And photos. For the parents benefit.

But the only way for OP to know if this is the case is to ask.

@mindutopia

They will be making observations, but not necessarily posting them to Tapestry. We might get one every week or two. But there are definitely times when there is nothing for 4-6 weeks and then several will come through. They're rightly busy actually caring for the children, and I'm glad they aren't spending that time with their face in a device instead of interacting with them.

Ours is similar, we usually get a couple a month but they tend to come through together after a longer gap as they sit waiting for ages to be approved by a senior staff member before they're released to us on Blossom. I've never been bothered about this, I want staff to spend their time nurturing my DC not doing paperwork. We don't get any other photos or anything either. I don't think I've ever seen an ob that showed my DC doing something that I wasn't already aware she could do/say really so far either.

Haven’t RTFT but there is new research being floated that there is a few ‘key children’ each week that are focused on for observations. Means that children are only observed around once or twice a term but they their observations are more meaningful

DD is full time and I think we get about one planned one a week plus lots of ad hoc bits and bobs during the week which I think they also use as supporting evidence. I think that's brilliant, every member of staff knows DD and she loves going so to get that level of feedback as well as handover is great for us.

ChocOrange1
It's probably worth asking the nursery how they're doing things.
Just because they're not uploading lengthy written observations and photos onto a parent platform doesn't mean they're not doing the observations. Short staffing would make a difference to written observations at some of my friends' nurseries as they can't sit on the ipad writing up observations if it throws them off ratio and there isn't enough staff for them to have their admin time.

I'm in favour of reducing written observations in EYFS though. They're trained professionals who are better spent with the children doing what they're trained to, rather than writing up box ticking observations for the benefit of parents and ofsted.

In my setting a child attending 1 day per week is expected to have one good quality, in depth, planned observations per month along with at least one 'spontaneous' observation which will still be linked to the EYFS but don't have to be as detailed.

My little one who is 3, attends two 8-5:30 days and there's generally a little update on what he's done each day

Nothing much against the EYFS just info about one or two activities he's done that day - some days they don't put anything but there's always a handover at pick up

We get one written comment- usually 2/3 paragraphs a week and photos every day. She only goes two mornings a week.

The comment is linked to the EYFS- we also get a list of what goals she's achieved.

Maybe they weren’t doing observations during closure so it was fair across the board.

Tbh @ChocOrange1 if you’re really unhappy look for another place.

Ds goes 3 days a week and gets a formal obs written up with loads of pictures and quotes linked to the eyfs about every ten days (when he was in the under subscribed baby room it was more like one a week), but we tend to get at least one photo and comment a day to show us something - dressing up, reading a book, in the mud kitchen, etc. Very like hamfisted